Mitigating Psychological Costs—The Role of Citizens’ Administrative Literacy and Social Capital

• Published date: 01 July 2022
• Author: Matthias Döring,Jonas Krogh Madsen
• Date: 01 July 2022
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13472

Research Article

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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Abstract: A key claim in the administrative burden framework is that citizens do not experience interactions with

public programs as equally burdensome. Existing research has argued that citizens’ generic human capital may

influence the severity of these experiences. In this article, we argue that a specific form of human capital specific to

interactions with public programs—administrative literacy—affects the psychological costs recipients are facing.

Specifically, we propose that administrative literacy is positively associated with autonomy maintenance in the face of

burdensome rules, and that autonomy maintenance is negatively associated with stress. In doing so, we investigate a

theoretically founded differentiation of psychological costs. We test these propositions using structural equation modeling

on a unique survey of 915 unemployment insurance recipients in Denmark. The findings support our arguments,

suggesting that accumulation or training of program-specific human capital may help recipients to cope with the

strains of unemployment.

Evidence for Practice

• Unemployment insurance recipients are highly vulnerable group as they encounter numerous administrative

burdens. These burdens inflict feelings of autonomy loss which lead to stress.

• Having high levels of administrative literacy reduces autonomy loss. Public organizations and employees

should foster citizens’ knowledge and skills about administrative procedures and requirements.

• Social capital serves as last safeguard to avoid severe psychological costs in the form of stress even when

lacking administrative literacy.

• Identifying clients with low levels of administrative literacy and/or social capital makes it easier to address

most needy clients.

The development of administrative burden as a

focal element of citizen-state interactions has

provided researchers with a conceptual tool

to advance various topics in public administration

research. Studies addressing administrative burden

range from macro-perspectives, such as policy take-up

(Fox, Stazyk, and Feng2020) and equity (Álvarez,

Devoto, and Winters2008; Heinrich2016), to micro-

phenomena, such as the psychological and economic

consequences for citizens that encounter onerous

regulations and demands from public programs

(Bhargava and Manoli2015; Hattke, Hensel, and

Kalucza2020; Soss1999).

Recently, researchers have started to explicitly address

whether individual resources influence how citizens

perceive, engage, and cope with administrative

processes (Christensen et al.2020; Döring2021;

Masood and Nisar2021; Mik-Meyer2017; Masood

and Nisar, Nielsen, and Bisgaard2021). Here, it

is widely claimed that citizens with lower levels of

human and social capital are less able to navigate

these processes and thus experience administrative

burdens more severely (Herd and Moynihan2019).

At the same time, scarcity, health problems, age-

related cognitive decline, and other common life

factors further exacerbate these effects (Christensen et

al.2020). However, we still lack empirical evidence

of how human capital differences actually affect the

impact of administrative burden. More importantly,

while the focus on generic human capital, such as

cognitive functioning (Christensen et al.2020), is

valuable, it has limited implications and value for

researchers and practitioners as they are difficult to

address through training, policy design, or during

encounters with public programs.

In this article, we investigate how a specific subset of

human capital—administrative literacy—affects the

experience of administrative burden among citizens

who are in close interaction with public programs.

According to Döring(2021), administrative literacy

describes the capacity to “obtain, process, and

understand basic information and services from

Matthias Döring

Jonas Krogh Madsen

Roskilde University

Mitigating Psychological Costs—The Role of Citizens’

Administrative Literacy and Social Capital

University of Southern Denmark

Jonas Krogh Madsen is a doctoral

candidate in Public Administration at the

Department of Social Sciences and Business

at Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark.

His research focuses on citizen-state

interactions, street-level bureaucracy, and

social policy.

Email: jkroghm@ruc.dk

Matthias Döring is an assistant professor

in Public Administration at the Department

of Political Science and Public Management

at the University of Southern Denmark,

Odense M, Denmark. His research focuses

on citizen-state interactions, street-level

bureaucracy, digitalization, and leadership.

Email: mdoering@sam.sdu.dk

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 82, Iss. 4, pp. 671–681. © 2022 The

Authors. Public Administration Review

published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of

American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.13472.

[The copyright line for this

article was changed on

6June 2022 after original

online publication.]